Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Can It Be So with Us?

A Reflection in Response to the 3rd Sunday in Advent, Year A

Text Focus: Psalm 146:5-10, Luke 1:45b-55, Matthew 11:2-11 Click here for all biblical textsHappy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in their God—truth known by John the Baptizer and Mary too. Can it be so with us? Dare we open our eyes enough to see God at work in every moment, read signs of the times and feel joy as God takes us on new journeys in faith? John did, and it led him to prison and death, while Mary’s life grew both inside and all about her, she proclaiming the gift of God’s favor, mercy and strength.

They seem so different, rough-clothed, even angry, on one hand (though might he be sweet in his own way), soft-spoken, gentle on the other (but so strong as well); yet both open to what God delivers— promise of salvation through another born to her, seen by him; she births, nurtures, the sprout, he witnesses the full-grown tree standing tall, speaking true in biblical witness in pages close together but separated by decades, yet saga tells us their births—John and Jesus—were close in time and even blood so they are cousins through their mothers’ line.

We know stories of these men as they live and die, almost side by side in Jerusalem and countryside, to carry God’s word to those who want to believe so long as it does not cost more than they, or we, will pay. If Mary had known she would weep at the foot of the cross on which hung her beloved son would then she praise or curse her fate, and his? And John, and his mother, cousin Elizabeth, would they then sing or speak in joy and love for the God of Jacob? The answer is yes, they did not count the cost dear but the chance to witness so much more than ever they dreamed in ordinary lives, a gift so rich their hearts ring full, Mary’s praises, John’s hand pointing to the one he came to announce.

Can it be so with us? Will we birth and nurture what God places in us trusting Holy One who is our soul and knows us inside out, from glowing darkness of God within, calling us to abandon old and narrow habits that block our own sacred living in a world that wants control and substitutes order for life? Will we cast out fear and choose joy, to take a chance on God?